Tuesday, February 14, 2006

X-Treme Talk

The second website I ever visited after the ICSE one,which was mandatory to see the results,was EXPN.Those who don't love extreme sports haven't seen it,let alone experience it.Today when I saw the results for the half-pipe event in the Winter Olympics at Turin and saw my favourite snowboarder Shaun White,all of 19, take yet another gold,it took me back to an episode of Winter-X where Shaun said after winning in Aspen-'This one chokes me man,chokes me'.

My association with xtreme sport is limited,but it's not that I haven't tried.The first thing I did after coming here was search for a BMX,when my friends were looking for the regular BSA-SLR for classes,bikes being banned here.I scouted every place I could with my limited freshie knowledge.Finally when I found one BMX model,turned out that the handle didn't turn 360 and the shopkeeper warned that it could breakdown on Indian roads.I was a freshie,but I wasn't stupid,so that plan was stalled.

Then I brought a borrowed skateboard from my cousins in the 3rd sem.Anyone who has even a little GK will have heard of Tony Hawk,if you haven't...well you shouldn't be reading this.I was electrified by the gravity defying tricks he pulled off-the record 900,the super high ollies,the cool vert tricks..I can fill this page here.Back home TV was never enough to feed me the tricks I dreamt of doing someday.After I came here I flooded my comp. with scorching skateboarding videos,both freestyle (Mullen et al) and the half-pipe/tour ones by Andy McD and Tony Hawk and the likes.Inspired and charged up I tried everything I could,but so far I haven't been able to pull off even an ollie,let alone the higher tricks.On the bright side I learnt how to ride a skateboard and that's consolation enough.Inline skating is the next in line,hopefully I'll learn that soon enough.

The hills in our campus are perfect for mountain-x,but since I couldn't get a BMX I can't show it to people.I even thought of wakeboarding in Vihar lake,but I realised that this sounded like a fantasy tale.Someday though,I'll do it all.Even B.A.S.E jumping.And hopefully stay alive to write about it.

Getting back to the Winter olympics,I hope Kelly Clark makes it 2 in a row in the half-pipe.She is right up there with my favourite sportswomen alonside Mia Hamm,Danica Patrick and Yelena Isinbayeva.Pretty list,eh?

After coming here the passion is hugely supressed,but it still kindles on.Sadly little can be done with people who watch endless movies on LAN,Wiki/IMDB for them and be pretentious jerks,play 'strategic' games on LAN,watch every silly soapcom mother of all being FRIENDS or just think that cricket is the only sport.But then,they might think the same,so I quit trying.The least I can do is to wait to get out.